Green Bean, Carrot Stir-Fry with Brown Jasmine Rice

I had a dish of green beans once in Beijing coated with tasty bits of pork (or what I thought was pork). I dreamed about this meal as much as I pined away for the lychee tea, and I never thought that I'd try to recreate the crispy beans at home vegan-style, but I was recently overwhelmed by a desire for a mountain of salty, smokey green beans.

I think that green beans are highly underestimated in American cuisine. Growing up my only experience with green beans came by way of a metal can or as an overcooked mush-fest of a casserole covered with funions. It's not that I didn't get fresh vegetables at home, it's just that green beans weren't really on the menu. When I first decided to purchase fresh beans, I was a bit taken aback by the hairy, spindly pods that felt like bony fingers when I scrubbed them. Then there is the prep time; scrubbing, cutting, steaming - they aren't a quick pop in the pot kind of meal. But, there really is nothing like a medley of crisp green beans lightly flavored. Plus they are just so damned gorgeous on the plate! This quick recipe has recently become a weekly treat. Sometimes I forgo the brown rice bed and just eat a heaping plate of veggies.

Green Bean, Carrot Stir Fry with Brown Jasmine Rice

Ingredients:
Marinade
1/4 c vegetable broth
1 T soy sauce
1 T apple cider vinegar
1 T liquid smoke
1 T maple syrup
1 clove crushed garlic

Stir Fry
1 T olive oil
1 medium onion chopped
1 lb fresh green beans, scrubbed with ends cut
1/2 C baby carrots
1 orange pepper (optional)

• Add all the marinade ingredients together and let sit
• Cut and prep all the vegetables
• Heat olive oil in a large skillet
• Add marinade and all veggies together
• Saute' all vegetables for about 10 minutes until onions are browned, peppers soft and beans and carrots softened (they should be crisp not mushy!)
• Serve on top of cooked brown jasmine rice

The key for me in this recipe is the crispy, over-cooked onions. They soak up the marinade and particularly the liquid smoke, and give the vegetables that salty goodness that I love.

So good!

No-one-likes-the-Vegan-Police Burritos

Yes, I have been avoiding you. I have been in a food slump. For the past three months vegan cuisine has been...well, kinda difficult. There, I said it. Vegan Police come get me.* It all seemed so easy a year ago in Rome when I was forced, without a properly equipped kitchen or an adequate budget, to invent recipes as I went along with ingredients that I just happened to have on hand.** So easy, in fact, that I decided to start blogging about it!

So why did I find myself a mere few months ago unable to throw two things together to concoct anything resembling a meal without a serious cookbook consultation? What happened to my relationship with food? All of a sudden vegan food didn't seem so cool anymore. I couldn't remember the last time it made me smile. Things just weren't as exciting as they used to be. Night after night it was just bitterness and disappointment. I just didn't know what to do..... It was time to take a break. First I tried an even stricter diet that didn't work, then I went a little crazy in Spain with some cheese. Nothing seemed to help.

Finally, I got my groove back. I reacquainted myself with delicious food in Italy. Deep red ripe tomatoes lightly bathed in olive oil and a touch of aged balsamic vinegar, fresh crusty bread dipped in vegetable minestra, lightly sauteed green beans slightly salted, and limone gelato. One week back in the boot reset my love of vegetables! It didn't hurt that someone else was doing the cooking either as I was able to remember that cooking is only a prelude to the reward of eating.


So, that revelation with the help of a new job, new city, new kitchen and a once again poorly stocked pantry, have reset my creative juices -- which are basically various flavors of olive oil! Enjoy this fabulous new recipe from a born-again veggie lover!


NO-ONE-LIKES-THE-VEGAN-POLICE BURRITOS or
SMOKEY CHICKPEA RICE AND ONION BURRITOS


This recipe is a total invention. I pulled leftovers from the last few days and threw a bit of everything into the frying pan. I have yet to restock my spice rack from the move, so the flavors are accidental, but pretty wickedly tasty!

Ingredients:
1 medium onion chopped
1 T olive oil
two shakes of liquid smoke
1 tsp red chili olive oil
1/2 tsp celery salt
3 T tomato sauce
1 C cooked chickpeas partly smashed down with a fork
3/4 C cooked brown rice
2-3 T water
1 T chopped parsley

1. Saute onion in olive oil in a medium frying pan until translucent
2. Add the liquid smoke, hot olive oil, celery salt and cook for about a minute and add tomato sauce
3. Add chickpeas and rice and stir to combine. Add water and stir. Cook until the sauce thickens.
4. Remove from heat add the chopped parsley and place in a soft burrito shell
5. Add salt and pepper as needed

The chili olive oil gives this dish a really beautiful orange hue and some spice, and the celery salt and liquid smoke combo really makes this dish "meaty" in flavor. Don't forget the parsley to add some much needed green to the dish. Buon appetito!!!

* see Scott Pilgrim vs the World
** to be completely fair, all ingredients in Italy are better, fresher, prettier, tastier...need I go on?

Wasabi Hummus

Ten days before a three week trip to Spain and Italy, I had the brilliant idea to start a diet. But you are vegan, you ask? Of course, and I do eat many healthy things, but I also eat a lot of junk. Just because it's vegan doesn't mean it's healthy. Shall I give you some examples? My morning cup/s of coffee are coupled with about a cup of non-dairy creamer (which is mostly fat) and a very generous helping of sugar. I snack on those dangerously vegan things like Spicy Sweet Chili Doritos, or Peanut Butter Zigzag non-dairy ice cream, and the worst culprit of all is the gratuitous amount of olive oil I use to drown the vegetable dishes that I make. I'm not saying that EVOO is bad, merely that when you start to use a quarter cup of it each night for dinner, then it may start to have an adverse effect on you. Not to mention my fair use of processed soy products which helped me through the initially uninspired years of veganism. I would have most definitely quit this eating routine without the ease of tofu, tempeh and soy milk. It is still a good way to sneak protein into your diet, but soy is also one of the most fatty vegetables.

So, here I was thinking about how I was going to live through Spanish tapas (which, btw are pretty much all meat or cheese) and I figured that it was the perfect time to cut out all the fat from my diet all together. No oils, less salt, no processed foods. Now, I know that there are critics out there that may laugh at my attempt to go even more healthy than vegan. I risk becoming a social pariah never able to enjoy a meal with her friends. Come on! I'm not going raw, just going lean for a few days. There are vegans of all sizes, and there is one thing that is true for most of us, we love to eat. So, for this impromptu diet I have been eating only things that come from the ground and that come to me in the form that they appear in nature like oats, rice, quinoa, vegetables and fruits. I'll be honest, it totally sucked at first, but I have been getting better at making incredibly flavorful things that satisfy any hunger pang. Today, I'm sharing one such recipe that I came up with that can easily be translated from hummus to potatoes!

WASABI HUMMUS

This is the BEST. No need for added salt, olive oil or anything but a cup of chick peas from the can or soaked and cooked and wasabi paste. If you have not been introduced to the versatile flavor of this Japanese horseradish, then you are seriously missing out. It is a perfect addition to spice up anything from mashed potatoes to stir fry and it gives this hummus a streak of heat.

Ingredients:
1 can chick peas drained and rinsed
1/2 C h2o
2 tsp wasabi paste*

Place all ingredients into a food processor or blender and blend until smooth. Eat with sliced vegetables or pita chips.

*For full disclosure, you can't find tubes of wasabi paste in nature, but the paste has nothing artificial about it and you are using such a small amount. You can also use a fresh wasabi root and grate it for use in this recipe.

Almost-ten-years-but-not-quite Black Bean Tamale Notes

Like Valentines day, our Anniversary was filled with a lot of cooking. Well, my husband doing a lot of cooking to be exact! Usually our wedding anniversary falls during a time when I am abroad. June seems to be the month most convenient for research trips to Italy (and I am not complaining!), so this year we wanted to forgo the typically fancy dinner and we made a feast from one of my favorites The Voluptuous Vegan. If you have followed some of my earlier posts you will know that this book offers some crazy satisfying meals (I mean full meals with plating instructions to boot!) that are, at times, labor intensive, but always worth the work.

For the big 7th my husband and I went for this fun recipe for Tamales to show our dedication to both cooking and each other. This meal comprised of Pickled Red Onions, Masa Harina Tamales with Black Beans and Tomatillo-Cilantro sauce and Chayote, Red Pepper and Corn salad. We also threw in some brown rice made with black bean water, which was a nice addition.

Green Pepper, Hot Oil & Daiya Tortilla Pizza

What is Daiya? Well, let me enlighten you. Daiya is the first cheese substitute (but I really hate to call it a substitute, let's just call it a super yummy cheesy topping) that I can no longer live without. There are only two other vegan edibles out there that match this new obsession: Spicy Sweet Chili Doritos and Purely Decadent Peanut Butter Zig Zag. Oh yes, these are vegan delights, and I am sure that you can imagine the menu of my junk food paradise, which in no way constitutes a healthy eating habit, even for a vegan. This is why I keep these items rarely stocked in my kitchen and almost never at the same time, lest I lost all sense of control.

As more and more vegan-friendly products are in demand this list of dangerous addictions grows, but Daiya is particularly satisfying for me. I have always been a cheese junky. It has been documented as we have recently discovered, in the pages of my sister's childhood journal, that I had a rather tiresome love of cheese. It started with Kraft slices, a seemingly innocuous childhood snack, and moved on to Velveeta dips, cream cheese, then plain blocks of cheddar and baby swiss. It wasn't until college that my taste in cheese refined to asiago, aged Parmesan, and Brie. I am sure that you can imagine that my first of many trips to Italy nearly knocked my cheese loving socks off, and really, to make a very long story short, I am still in disbelief that I gave it all up three years ago.

One day I literally stopped eating cheese in all its flavorful iterations, and I haven't missed it much. I did try here and there some soy/rice slices for grilled cheese to some success, but nothing to write home about. I have never brought myself to invest in having gourmet nut cheese (which some people swear by) shipped to my door. But then again, I haven't really been searching to fill the cheeseless void. My vegetable pizza can surely rival any double-cheese, pepperoni laden pie, and I am a much more discerning tomato sauce consumer and creator. If the world never created a good "cheese" I would have been a content vegan.

But, then there is Diaya and it's good. It's available at my supermarket at reasonable price. So far I have tried it on pizza, pasta and veggies and I have to say, I am hooked! It is a non-soy healthy version of a cheesy topping. Check it out --> Diaya

This is one of the quick lunch recipes that I make for dissertation writing breaks.

GREEN PEPPER, HOT OIL & DIAYA TORTILLA PIZZA

Ingredients:
1/2 C tomato sauce
1/2 green bell pepper chopped
1/2 T hot pepper oil
1/2 C Shredded Daiya mozzarella
1 wheat tortilla

• Heat the oven to 425 degrees
• Oil a baking pan
• Place the tortilla on the baking pan, add the sauce, pepper and cheese, drizzle some hot oil over the top
• Bake or 10 minutes or until the cheese is melted and bubbly.

Orto Love

This little garden is busting out of it's recycled door boundaries! I, of course, have overcrowded all the vegetables growing in this small little box of bounty, and the zucchini are encroaching on the poor little peppers who are the runts of this litter. The tomatoes, after months of weak stems, are reaching to the sky at amazing speed, and the lettuce has been harvested. I am amazed at how little effort that this blooming little patch of earth required and I have so many plans for the next one! My goal for the summer is to have a salad of greens and tomatoes entirely from my garden served with zucchini and pasta. The little hot peppers need a miracle to make it, but if they do survive a mean salsa is in store!



If you can catch a glimpse of it, I also have some mild onions and arugula in the side pots!

Tomato Pesto

My vegan friend Jennifer got me hooked on the fabulously beautiful blog Vegan Yum Yum, which I totally recommend, though it makes my messy blog look like a third grade craft project entirely created in blue-green crayon. Among the fabulous recipes, I must thank Lolo for teaching me how to chop an onion correctly so that I can now enjoy hacking into those tearjerkers as much as I love eating them. She also has some fab tips on food photography, which, as you will note, I am not so good at taking to heart. In any case, despite how inept this online masterpiece makes me feel, I love her blog and book (aptly entitled VeganYumYum) so much, that I really can't feel bad for long.

So, as I was writing, one of my few vegan friends sent me a link to a magically quick and creamy recipe for Tomato Basil Cream Pasta. I loved it, but in a quick pinch to replicate it one day when I was too lazy to turn on the computer to seek it out anew, I came up with this Yum Yum inspired tomato pesto that had me going for seconds! Plus, this is a really rich way to take care of those tomatoes that are just about ready to go.


TOMATO PESTO

Ingredients:
3 large tomatoes quartered and squeezed of seeds
1/2 C pine nuts
1/4 C sun-dried tomatoes
1/8 C fresh basil
2 cloves garlic chunked
2 T olive oil
1 tsp salt

• Soak the sun-dried tomatoes in boiling water for about 15min to rehydrate.
  
• Add all ingredients into a food processor and process until well integrated but still chunky.
• Mix with your favorite pasta!
  

I loved this recipe and found myself counting down the seconds until leftover lunch the next day. So, whip up some of this and start checking out the much more refined culinary creative force of Lolo's version!